PROJECT EXPERIENCE:
Cavalier Wildlife Management Area
Boundary Survey
Location: CHESAPEAKE, VA

Project Background: Cavalier Wildlife Management Area (WMA) provides coastal and forested habitats for a wide range of wildlife, including black bear, neo-tropical migratory songbirds, canebrake rattlesnakes, white-tailed deer, and eastern wild turkeys.

Currently, much of the management area is cutover forest land, with several hundred acres in 15-year-old planted pine. The 3,800-acre main tract, located approximately 2.5 miles east of the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), was once part of the Great Dismal Swamp but was ditched and drained more than 200 years ago.

Work Performed: For this fast track assignment Rice Associates worked hand-in-hand with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) and the various agencies to properly divide the property into four investment-grant areas ranging from 150 acres to 2,300 acres.

Rice Associates provided complete aerial mapping of the site for wildlife conservation planning which included color ortho-rectified photography. During the process of developing the mosaic of the boundary parcels the firm discovered an area of discrepancy of 7.84 acres that Beaverdam Properties was claiming by occupation and that VDGIF owned by deed and plat.

Rice Associates met with the adjoining land owners, their lawyer's, VDGIF staff, and the Commonwealth of Virginia Attorney General's Office to develop a boundary line agreement plat to allow Beaverdam Properties the ability to continue to farm the existing land they had been farming for hundreds of years.

Rice Associates maintains a firmly rooted relationship with VDGIF and has supported them in a similar manner on other properties. Over the past two years the firm has mapped and surveyed in excess of 15,000 acres for VDGIF.